One day last week, incidentally the same day I decided to start a blog, I popped into my amazing local budget cosmetics and toiletries shop to pick up a few little bargains. Now, I’ve been going into this shop, Keri-Anns in Daventry, for as long as I can remember to buy hair grips and bargain make up (not much has changed in the past 10 years then!) but I haven’t been in for a little while…gosh was I in for a treat…
So being a lover of anything nail related I knew that I fancied treating myself to some new bits to dabble with, and I happened to stumble across a brand I’d never heard of before, ‘Pretty by Quest’. The shop had a wide variety of their items dotted around all priced at a mere £1. Now as you can imagine, I was like a kid in a sweet shop! After wanting to buy one of everything in the range I settled for purchasing just 4 items. I thought that the best thing to do was to buy a selection of items and try them out for quality first. Sensible I know. However; now I kinda wish I’d bought the entire shop because I was not in the slightest bit disappointed with this little gem of a brand. So here’s what I bought with a little review of each item.
The first item that I was desperate to try was the ‘Scatter Effect’ polish. I had seen something very similar on Pinterest once and have been looking for a reasonably priced alternative since. They also had this polish in 2 other colours in the shop, including a white and black which looked like it would give a nice speckled effect. Like with all glitter polishes, this was fairly thick and did take a bit of drying time. Nothing out of the ordinary there. I applied this over a clear base coat as I wasn’t 100% sure how bold the white of the polish would be. As it goes, I think this would work better on top of a natural coloured polish just to make it more opaque. I wanted a good coverage, and a good amount of the glitter to come through, so I applied 3 coats of the polish. I let the second coat dry fully before applying the last coat so that it wouldn’t go gloopy. I was really pleased with how the manicure looked after applying 3 coats, and it lasted me from Wednesday to Sunday…not bad at all for a £1 polish! So far so good with this brand.
I decided to try the other 3 products in one sitting as I couldn’t choose which one I wanted to try first! Here is the overall result…
First off, I painted my nails using a gorgeous purple Barry M polish as I knew that everything would stand out well against it. Usually I would do polka dots with a dotting tool to get a neater finis,h but I wanted to see what I could do with the black ‘Nail Art Striper’. As it goes it is not an ideal tool for doing dots (I assumed that would be the case!) but I did a few stripes with it on my other hand and it was easy to use and dried extremely quickly. I can’t wait to experiment with the stripers some more, and at £1 for a pack of 2, they are incredible value.
Next up, I used the ‘Heart Glitter’, which again came in another 2 colours, pink and teal. I love anything gold so that was the choice for me. This was an extremely thick polish and took a bit of getting used to. I put far too much on my first nail which meant it took about an hour or so to properly dry. I eventually got a bit of a technique going and used an Orange Stick to spread the hearts out evenly and get extras off the brush. Overall, I think the hearts give a lovely finish, and unlike gems, they don’t stick up off the nails so I haven’t got the overwhelming urge to pick them all off! I think doing a manicure with the hearts on every nail would be adorable so that’s one for the list.
Lastly, I applied a flower from the ‘Confetti Nail Art’ wheel. There’s a bit of a selection in this pack including; flowers, butterflies and dragonflies in various colours. Overall, a cute collection for the spring. I love flowers so had to try them out first. The little transfer themselves are fairly thin but not too thin. As in they’re not water decal thin, but they’re very workable. I used tweezers to pick them up and place them on the nail, I then used a hoof stick to pat them down gently. I say gently because if you press too hard then all of the went polish underneath squashes up and into the gaps a bit too much. I had this trouble on my other hand. After I’d made sure that all of the edges were flat to the nail, I applied a clear top coat as normal. Because the transfers are made of an almost plastic material, you don’t have to worry about any of the colour running on them. Bonus! Again, another excellent little product from this brand.
Overall I was pleasantly surprised with Pretty by Quest and was very glad that I took that trip into Keri-Anns last week! I really can’t wait to try more products as they have some amazing looking polishes such as ‘Concrete Effect’, ‘Denim Effect’ and ‘Feather Effect’, and a wide selection of nail art products available. I believe that this brand is stocked in Poundland (I’m yet to look for it in there) but for those who don’t have a Poundland near by, you can purchase a small amount of the range from www.colourcosmetics.co.uk
I hope that this review has been helpful and has made you see what a great selection of products you can get from a brand that perhaps you would over-look when buying budget cosmetics. Keep your eye out for more reviews from this brand coming in the future as I’m already itching to go and buy more!
Sam x
